The Random Musings of Frodo Baggins
by Flame Tigress
Summary: After the Quest, between Aragorn's coronation and the Ringbearers' eventual departure for the West, Frodo records his random thoughts, emotions, and revelations, from selfpity to selfparody. Final Chapter up: I come home again
1. Introduction

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Disclaimer: Would it surprise anyone if I told them that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote _The Lord of the Rings_ and I didn't? Would any fanfiction writer be amazed that I am not getting paid for corrupting someone else's brilliant ideas? No, didn't think so.

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Author's Note (from the _real_ author; this entire chapter is Frodo's "Author's Note"): The characterization of Frodo Baggins that you find in this fic might differ from the Frodo you have seen in the majority of _Lord of the Rings_-based fanfiction. As many writers' interpretations of characters are, this version of Frodo is, like the Tom Riddle/Voldemort of my _Harry Potter_ fanfic (whom I should get patented), an extension of my own personality. He is witty and matter-of-fact, philosophical and anti-philosophical at once, with a dry sense of humor and irony and a delight in self-parody. Uncommon in the extensive genre of Hobbit-angst is his tendency to mock and admonish self-pity, and while these vignettes abound in angst and self-pity, it is countered with a wry side and thereby, I sincerely hope, kept from being bogged down in excessively self-occupied remorse and misery. A reviewer once commended me for giving Frodo a decently sophisticated vocabulary and not making him the whiny teenager of far too many fanfics. He is educated, after all, and not only "as hobbits go." No one wants a character who loudly demands sympathy; one who simply presents his case and allows the reader to choose to sympathize is much preferable. That is the Voldemort I consistently write, and it is the Frodo I strive to create in my interpretation of him and the kind of thoughts and Random Musings he might have.

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The Random Musings of Frodo Baggins

In introduction of this little compilation, I must first assert that _this is not a diary._ I will not be opening the entries in these pages with such items as "I had porridge for breakfast today," for I am quite certain that posterity (or whatever unfortunate soul happens upon my inane ramblings) does not care.

Rather, this collection of writings is just that – a collection of written records of my most noteworthy ponderings and epiphanies while here in Minas Tirith, awaiting whatever wonderful occurrence Aragorn promises will make the delay of our homecoming worthwhile. I find myself doing a great deal of withdrawn musing these days; for I think I have been irrevocably changed by my odyssey through darkness, both for the worse and in a way for the better – or for the wiser, at any rate. I think also that perhaps I should like to keep a record of these musings in the event that one of them, at least, might prove valuable to my own recollection of these days, if not to anyone else. And it is amusing to imagine the historians of the future looking to these writings for a portrait of the famous Halfling Ring-bearer whose sacrifice, unlikely courage, finger, et cetera, bought the freedom of Middle-earth from the darkening Shadow of Mordor.

So here I begin my own book, not a cohesive story like Bilbo's _There and Back Again _or the account of my own adventures that Bilbo will no doubt force me to write, but a book of my disconnected, rambling, ranting, random innermost thoughts and musings. Read, O discoverer, if you desire a window into the mind of Frodo Baggins; I can guarantee that your desire will be more than sated before long.


	2. I ban self pity and then promptly procee...

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Disclaimer: No, these characters aren't mine, and neither is this world, though the weird random sh*t (an expression Meliara adores using) is.

15 May, Third Age 3019

(Shire Reckoning 1419)

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I ban self-pity and then promptly proceed to wallow in it; 

I get very wet and am philosophical

In these thoughts, I could dwell exclusively on my misfortunes and expound upon my misery. I could say that I am haunted night and day by memories of the darkness, barrenness, and bleak hopelessness of Mordor. I could confide that I am never for a moment able to forget the burning, feral, mindless triumph that consumed me in the moment when my strength failed both me and the Quest and I claimed the Ring. I could rail that I hate the way some people treat me like a thing of glass, yet I hate as much when people act as if everything is normal, when it is not and never will be again. I will not detail the recurring nightmares of being naked in the dark and unable to hide from the monstrous flaming eye that sees endlessly far and commands legions of horrors and is seeking, ever seeking, for me; nightmares that cause me to wake drenched in sweat and trembling with tears.

No – having released such frustrations in the above passage, I will proceed to inform this piece of parchment that the rain today was very conducive to philosophizing. I had been in my chamber, considering aloud to blank paper and as-yet-without-ink quill how to begin the story of my travels and travails, in anticipation of Bilbo's insistence that I make a jolly good yarn out of my quest. (All right, that wasn't fair. I'm no adventurer, nor am I a storyteller of any merit, but I cannot blame my dear long-time guardian for expecting this one tale of my first and only adventure, which will probably prove, intending no conceit, more influential than I myself can grasp.) But although how to begin was the immediate problem, how to willingly bring to the surface of my mind and describe the later stages of my journey was the issue that more persistently plagued me and caused me a moment's resentment toward Bilbo for the ease with which the perfect words come to him and the similar narrative ease he expects from me. And I do not care to voluntarily relive Mordor, even in the name of history.

With full acknowledgement of how juvenile and petulant this will make me sound, it's not fair, damn it.

Oh, yes – the topic of my thoughts earlier today was the reason I promised not to spend these pages complaining and bemoaning my fate. All right, _now_ I'm starting.

Anyway – I was thinking, brooding, moping, and fully intending to write _sometime_ before the Fourth Age came to an end when Pippin came marching in a very businesslike manner up the stairs to my tower room. He was so soaked through as to look like he had been taking a bath fully clothed. He seemed quite short of breath, so I surmise that he would have come pelting up the stairs if he had not realized somewhere in the middle of the staircase that he could not keep up a breakneck pace for more than eight flights of steps. Without so much as a by-your-leave, he flung the door open and announced, "Now that you have demonstrated your very credible impression of a tortoise with its head drawn into its shell, Cousin, you have everyone's invitation to come out of your cave. Or if you are waiting for that paper to age authentically, you might want to be outside enjoying the weather while you wait. A watched page never yellows, you know."

I scrutinized with raised eyebrows my cousin's dripping hair and clothes and the rapidly-growing wet spot on the elven-made rug on which he was standing. I glanced over at the pale gray sky and falling rain outside, and then returned my gaze to Pippin. "Been 'outside enjoying the weather,' have you?" I asked sarcastically, indicating the water accumulating at his feet.

He looked down, noticing the dampness of the carpet, looked sheepishly back up at me, and laughed. "Oh, come on! Do you consider it your duty as our elder to spoil sport?"

Sighing, I stood up, shook my head in exasperation, and reached for the Lothlórien cloak that hung by the door. "Ah, don't bother with the cloak," Pippin urged me, but I ignored him and put it on anyway. He evidently found it easier to go pelting _down_ multiple flights of stairs than up, and so proceeded to do so, while I _walked_ down them in his wake.

The heavy outer door to the tower had been propped open, and a slight wind was sending the rain slanting onto the stone floor of the entry hall. Pippin dashed out of the door without hesitation and joined Merry and Sam where the former was tilting his head back to catch the drops in his mouth and the latter was just standing in the downpour with hands upturned and gazing around at the rain with the air of one beholding a miracle. I pulled up the hood of my cloak and dubiously stepped out into the cascading water on the stone-paved, tree-lined courtyard. As soon as I did, I found that I truly did not want the water-repelling elven garment; I cast it off and stood dumbly with my face turned toward the shining _mithril_-colored heavens to feel the cool summer rain upon it. I understood exactly how Sam must have felt. It was a miracle, after enduring a torturous trek across the parched desert land of Mordor, to be surrounded by such an abundance of the two things we most lacked and longed for: simple light and water. I started to laugh with pure exultation, shutting my eyes tightly then opening them wide to gaze at the rain and the cloud curtain lit from behind above me, not caring that my clothing was becoming more waterlogged with each moment that passed or that the water was getting in my eyes. When laughter and tears mingled and merged I could not really tell; I only knew that I was feeling a piercing, visceral joy, coupled with an unspeakable sorrow I could not explain, the like of which I had not felt since the celebration on the field of Cormallen, and before then I had never felt before.

And the philosophy I formulated today? It is that a great many things in this world are still wonderful.

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Author's Note: This work, written and posted around the first anniversary of September 11, 2001, is dedicated to a country in mourning with the message that although terrible atrocities are committed; although we wish they had not happened in our time, though it is not for us to decide; although wounds are sustained that will never really heal, many things in this world are still wonderful. _Namárië _and _shalom._


	3. I consider the stars and wax poetical

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Disclaimer: See previous two chapters, previous 14 _LotR_-based fics. Much as I enjoy being clever with my disclaimers, I will say that this applies to all future chapters.

May 18, Third Age 3019

(Shire Reckoning 1419)

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I consider the stars and wax poetical

I stayed out late last night – the first night without rain after the near-summer storm that passed through and inspired philosophy – just to watch the sun set and the stars come out. The night sky is always clearer, the stars' pinpoints of light sharper, after the rain washes the heavens and the clouds part. I suppose I have always noticed their beauty, but it had never been quite as novel as it has been since my return from Mordor. I remember my first night after waking up, I felt as though I were seeing the stars for the first time, learning for the first time what they are – and in a way I was, for I had forgotten in my darkness how they shine, a breathtaking array of tiny shards of crystal brilliance, filling the endless void and dispersing the darkness. (And there was Eärendil, whose light I had carried with me even to the heart of Mordor! An old friend is he, the last pure, unsullied light of the Two Trees of Valinor to shine upon the earth, the only of the Silmarils that is not lost to eyes forever; the light seems dimmer when surrounded by fellow light, but more at home.) So small they are, and so weak is each alone in the light it gives, and yet how magnificent they seem when united – in that way they, the children of Elbereth, are much like the Children of the One; for were the radiance of a single star to be taken from the multitudes, how much less would be their glory! 

These millions of candles of unwavering white flame, this nightly miracle of light amidst the shadow, should strike new wonder into the hearts of all members of all the peoples with every evening, and yet their wonder fades with the frequency of their appearance. So it must have been with me before such memories of beauty were burned away; and so, no doubt, it will go again when I behold the star-host every night. Although the sacrifice I made, manifested in my loss of any image of the beautiful things of the world, was grievous, in a way I was uncommonly blessed to be able to experience twice in but one lifetime the miracle of being a child beholding the anything-but-small marvels of rain, sky, trees, flowers, and stars for the first time.

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Author's Note and Obligatory Plug: Very short, I know, but remember that these are Random Musings and therefore only fragments of thought, and that brevity is the soul of profundity. And now I can start up my self-advertising campaign again! Please, please, please, please, _please_ read some of my older stuff if you like this, because it's just sitting and stagnating in my archives with reviews only trickling in at very sparse intervals – a depressing situation indeed. So browse my previous works and read and review whatever looks interesting to you. (If you leave a signed review, I can return the favor.) Thank you!


	4. I consider also the Elves, begging their...

Two o'clock in the morning, May 19, Third Age 3019

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I consider also the Elves, begging their pardon

I have wondered sometimes why the Elves – called the Eldar, the "People of the Stars" – hold the lights of the night sky in such reverence while Men, the second comers, instead turn to the day. It has been said that the Firstborn Kindred of the Children of God love the evening because when they awoke beside Cuivénen, the Water of Awakening in Beleriand that is lost, only the stars shone in the heavens above them, and the creator of this magnificent glory they worshiped. Whereas Men awoke when the Sun, the last fruit borne by Laurelin, and the brightest light that illumines the sky, was shining, and so they give their honor to this celestial body. Still, even the Elves look upon the dawn as a symbol of hope and upon the night as one of sorrow because of the contrast of light and darkness. The sunset should symbolize the loss of hope, if the sunrise means the opposite, should it not, even though the Sun sets in the West where lie the Undying Lands? But upon thinking about it (for I have been given abundant time to think), I have hypothesized that perhaps because the Elves are both "young and old, gay and sad" – to quote as closely as memory allows my dear, astute friend Samwise – they favor the bitter sweetness that is the evening and the West that has lain just out of their reach until their labors are done here in Middle-earth that they have loved, for a time, as their home. The Elves are a people of bitter sweetness, for as immortals, they live and turn and grow and change with the earth, and they fade with it as well; they watch its sunset fall as their own works and they themselves must fade and go and a new dawn must rise without them, a beginning that heralds also an end, as every beginning by its nature does.

I cannot pretend to know what meaning the stars and the end of day have for a people older, greater, wiser, and far more hidden in their ways than mine. But I know why _I_ now see more wonder and glory in the stars than in the sun, when before the Quest, my reverence for the night had only been derived from my awe of the Eldar and my knowledge of the love they bore for the stars. Having learned of it myself and deeply felt its absence, I know that there is more of a sorrowful beauty in the elder light that shines at night, the light amid the darkness, the hope that shines in the midst of drear despair and hopelessness, than in the radiance that shines unchallenged. 

While giving but dim light, the Moon and the stars that glow despite the darkness all around them give hope to the heart that will see in metaphor: We, too, may shine when surrounded by shadow and near being swallowed by despair; we, too, can defy the darkness and, feeble and fallible as we are, we can prevail against it. Still with upraised lamps we may light the path, like the stars, for the wanderers blinded by night until the dawn comes to banish all fear, for as sure as the Sun's setting is its rising; not in vain do we and the stars preserve light throughout the despair of night. This did every soldier who gave his life to stave off the Shadow; this did Merry and Pippin, who kept their hearts hopeful even in the darkest hour; and so did Sam, my stars where no stars shone and my lantern where no light dared fall. This I thought I did as I struggled through Mordor; I thought that my desperate, torturous labors would enable the night to end and the Sun to rise again. I thought I understood the part of the Elves, guiding and shepherding the wayward race of Man through the years of darkness until it came into its own and its day dawned.

But I remember sitting with Sam at the top of Mount Doom while the world burned and roared around us, while the dark tower fell and all ended in fire and ash. I recall looking north, where the sky was clear; watching the Sun rise, not minding that it would rise without me, for I had had some part in paving the way for the Sun's rising, but in the end, this dawn was neither my doing nor my dawn. Then, I thought, I more truly knew how the Elves felt as their time faded – that their setting gave way to a dawning not theirs. Like the stars that dim in the darkest hour, just before day.

Which will be coming soon, as I was feeling very restless and pensive when I would much rather have been sound asleep, and decided to write down some of my thoughts in the hope that I could at least alleviate the restlessness, if the pensiveness, alas, is a chronic condition. Yet I do not think that what I have recorded is the whole of the thoughts that were troubling me, though I cannot quite put a figurative finger on the cause of my recent restlessness, and it is difficult to explain. I often feel as if there are answers just barely out of reach, always hovering at the periphery of my vision, an unceasing itch in my brain. An empty feeling that tells me there is something else I should be thinking, should have realized, and perhaps if I had followed the train of my thoughts just a little farther, I would have found it; that there is somewhere else I should be, or something else I should be doing. And currently, that is sleeping, because my eyes are starting to sting and my mind is wandering. _Dú nuin-elenath* _to you,O reader, and _dú ú-nuin-ely** _to me.

* "Night under stars" – an idiomatic Sindarin "good night" expression I thought up.

** "Night not under dreams" – the word _ol,_ "dream," refers (considering the usage of both J.R.R. Tolkien and the linguistics people on the movie-making staff; I don't know J.R.R.'s true intentions) both to dream as in daydream, or hopes and imagination, and as in dreams at night. There is a bit of _double entendre_ here – Frodo wishes himself not only a night undisturbed by nightmares or any dreams at all, but also untroubled by stray waking thoughts.

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Author's Note: Ooh, check out the foreshadowing in that entry. And while you're checking things out, check out my other stories. Check out that transition! I'm feeling very artful today.

My, but this entry took a long time! I was experiencing difficulties in finding a good way to end it without getting sappy or pedantic, and it took drinking an entire cup of coffee (that's a lot for me, because I'm not acclimated to the stimulant effects of caffeine) at so I could stay awake and do my homework at 10:00 at night and then not being able to get to sleep until 4:30 A.M. to come up with the "not my dawn" thing. It's going to come back in later entries, just so you know. The next entry won't be as long in the posting, because it's already mostly written, you may be happy to hear. So review, please, and I may grace you with the privilege of reading more of my excellent prose. Just kidding; I'm not really that arrogant. I don't think. Thanks to all who have reviewed so far, especially repeat reviewers (serial reviewers?). It means more to me than you know that you like my writing enough that you come back for more.


	5. I write a poem and am very pleased with ...

May 25, Third Age 3019  
I write a poem and am very pleased with myself  
  
  
I appear to have found my long-lost poetic talent - no, perhaps "talent" is going too far. Poetic inclination. Ambition. Aspiration. Something.  
  
My poem has a rhyme scheme, something that vaguely resembles a meter, and a motif (hurrah!). The motif is really the heart of the poem; I wished to write a poem about the Shire, so I needed to describe her in a concise phrase that ended in an easily rhymed word, and thus I conceived of "West of the River, east of the Sea." And then I had this clever idea that I should vary it with each stanza- I will now stop enthusing about my brilliant process and write out the poem, minus all the messy edits.  
  
  
Tucked away in the far northwest of Middle-earth  
Is the Hobbits' quaint country, the land of my birth,  
Where the joys found are simple and petty is strife:  
My home, I thought, for a content, peaceful life.  
The Shire, the Shire! beloved is she,  
West of the Brandywine, east of the Sea.  
  
But the world that I knew once is turned upside-down:  
I carry the world's fate; I must not be found.  
Pursued by a dark force, I fly here therefore,  
To preserve the foothold where my feet stand no more.  
The Shire, the Shire! no foothold for me,  
Still west of the Shadow, yet east of the Sea.  
  
Howe'er far I wander, my love will not fade  
For each tree of my homeland, for each glen and glade;  
So I'll press on through fear, and if need be, alone,  
With my love, if my strength leaves, to topple the throne.  
The Shire! from the cold Eastern wind one last lee,  
Too far west to gaze, but still east of the Sea.  
  
Too long under darkness, no mem'ry remains  
Of the woods and little rivers, the fields and the plains  
That lie golden somewhere in the afternoon's spell -  
Thanks to Elbereth, far from my ash-ridden hell.  
The Shire, the Shire! one place that stays free  
Far west of my torment, just east of the Sea.  
  
When all lands are delivered and darkness o'erthrown,  
And King is the crownless, and rightful the throne;  
When honor is given and battles are done,  
I long just for a garden nurtured by sun.  
The Shire, the Shire! I yearn now for thee,  
Thou west of the River and east of the Sea.  
  
  
Voilà. I was quite proud of it, so for the first time, I showed a poem to Gandalf, as Bilbo does with his numerous songs (though I neglected to tell Gandalf that my first poetic attempt was in fact a memorial tribute to him), and he seemed to rather like it. He commented on the motif, which I'm not sure if I've mentioned enough...  
  
He said he wrote a poem with an end-of-stanza pattern once, when he was a pupil of the Valar (and something near a demigod, now that I think of it) in the West. I asked if he had a written copy he could lend me and he pulled it out of his voluminous sleeve. I will refrain from calling Gandalf the White a show-off. The paper read as follows:  
  
  
I heard the wind's breath rush from mount Ever-white,  
A painting of music and the music of light,  
Swift eagles of thunder with the lightning that burned:  
I beheld Manwë's might, and wonder I learned.  
  
To the heavens I gazed at the gem-like starlight  
That is kindled yet brighter in the darkest hour of night.  
To these beacons of diamond have the earth-bound e'er turned:  
I saw Varda's candles, and thus hope I learned.  
  
The vast gray waves' rhythm I heard on the shore  
That they ever have beaten and will beat ever more.  
Here the rushing-foam rivers have always returned:  
I watched Ulmo's ocean, and constance I learned.  
  
From the earth spring all growing things, fertile and fair;  
With a mother's embrace, taking all in her care,  
From Earth's arms runs life and thence is returned:  
I walked Yavanna's earth, and of giving I learned.  
  
In the forge 'neath the mountains there lives the same love:  
A delighting in beauty and the making thereof.  
By skilled hands and nimble minds is pride in craft earned:  
I watched Aulë's labors, and the joy of art learned.  
  
In the shadowed Dead Houses walk the souls of the slain,  
Where, with mem'ry of the whole world's injustice, remain  
Ev'ry fate, that all deeds good or ill be returned:  
Mandos' halls I beheld, and there justice I learned.  
  
And there in these Houses countless storied webs are hung,  
From memories woven, and heroes long sung.  
Where nothing is forgotten since before the stars burned,  
Vairë's tapestries I read; to remember I learned.  
  
From the halls west of West, a lamenting song's strain  
Mourns unnumbered hurts suffered, and cries untold pain.  
But to wisdom can tears of selfless grief be turned:  
I listened to Nienna's song, and pity I learned.  
  
In the gardens of Lórien where the mighty find rest,  
Sleep may bring peace to the turbulent breast;  
For its healing oblivion have the tormented yearned:  
As gray-clad Estë slept, serenity I learned.  
  
And at rest, visions come to the sleep-shrouded mind,  
Tendrils of the senses and thought left behind,  
Divine wisdom as the depths of our own souls return;  
From the dreams ruled by Irmo, to see did I learn.  
  
O'er the hills and the valleys a great horn's call rang  
As I listened; a warrior's herald it sang.  
In his horn and his steed's hooves the wind's fire burned:  
Oromë's hunt I watched, and his fierce joy I learned.  
  
At the feet of the Ever-young I watched flowers grow;  
As she sang, from the sleeping earth melted the snow -  
At her call, from the winter, spring has ever returned:  
I beheld Vána's dance, and renewal I learned.  
  
In each moment that passes, the heart may find mirth  
That looks not to the future for death or rebirth,  
With a joy just to live, taking fate as it's turned:  
Tulkas Valiant laughed, and laughter I learned.  
  
To run light as air with the wind whistling by,  
Like a shaft straight and true, to with wingéd feet fly,  
With swift deer far outstripped and the bonds of earth spurned:  
I watched Nessa run, and of freedom I learned.  
  
  
When I had finished reading and was gazing at him openmouthed, trying to comprehend that I was sitting beside one who had spoken with the gods (and like a child proudly showing him and asking his approval of my attempts at poetry!) - that I was but two degrees of separation away from Ilúvatar Himself - Gandalf gently took the page back, with one of his warm, humorous, cryptic smiles on his lips. Hardly seeming to think about it, he wrote one last verse below the others:  
  
  
But in the most timid Hobbit's heart, a deep-buried seed  
Of unlikely courage takes root, hidden, 'til need  
Awakes it; then may mighty counsels o'erturn:  
'Twas from this, the humblest teacher, that belief did I learn.  
  
  
and because of an odd block in my throat, I found myself suddenly unable to speak.  
  
Elbereth knows I am still seeking for words.  
  
Needless to say, Gandalf let me keep his poem, and he told me that mine was wonderful.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Author's Note: Wow. Poems are a format challenge. I'll have to improvise a bit to deal with it...whatever I do, it'll look a little different - just warning you in advance. OK, I lied - I said this wouldn't take as long as the last one, but I think it took longer. That's because I had no time and still don't have any time, but I'm making time for my pet fanfiction, so there. I hate my life. I wrote both poems (hurrah for me). Hope you liked my "degrees of separation" joke. Hehe. I also hope you recognize the "West of the ___, east of the Sea" phrase from ROTK; I'm not quoting it directly yet, but the poem is not finished. Just a bit of foreshadowing.  
  
In other news, I've been trying to finish and post a Special Extended Edition (ooh, aah) of my most popular and just about least satisfactory work, "'Samwise Gamgee and the Ring'" (for people who haven't read it, the double quotes are intentional - the story title is a hypothetical story title). So stay tuned, but don't hold your breath, because once again I must reiterate that I have no time, I'm never satisfied with anything I write, and I hate my life. Also more stuff in the works, including some of what I have previously advertised and new ideas that keep showing their maniacal, leering faces in my head completely uninvited, the pesky little blighters. 


	6. I go on an outing

June 3, Third Age 3019

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I go on an outing

I went out hunting with Faramir today. I don't particularly enjoy the sport myself, but he invited me and it would have been impolite to refuse. I made progress on the expedition: I didn't run away from Faramir's dogs, and the conversation did not dwell on my experience in Mordor, about which too many are overtly (and, in my mind, overly) curious. Perhaps because he saw just how wrung-out I looked in Ithilien, or perhaps because as a captain of Gondor he has seen Mordor's desolation for himself, Faramir knows that it is best not to ask about it – nor to pretend that it did not happen, as yet others are inclined to do.

Plus, I learned to fly a falcon. She got a rabbit.

But small accomplishments aside, I felt it might be helpful to my work on a memoir of my adventures to practice fabricating dialogue from the gist of a conversation, so I will here transcribe the final draft of the dramatized version of my discussion with Faramir after lunch.

Faramir and I talked mostly of the Elves and of Númenor, of the literature and history that we had both learned under Gandalf's tutelage. We analyzed the layers of symbolism and allegory in ancient works; we mused over the repetition of history, and how the downfall of Númenor recalled the exile of the Noldor, or how the later decline of Gondor before the end of the Third Age once more faintly echoed it; we observed that the seductive whispers of Sauron in the ears of Elves and Men should have been ineffectual had those who fell to the Enemy's temptation remembered the history of the destruction wrought by the lies of Morgoth in the First Age; and, edging ever nearer to the topic of conversation that both mostly wanted to avoid, we considered the corruptive power contained in unthreatening objects of little size but substantial beauty, and how evil can result from attempts to preserve what is beautiful.

"Isn't it surreal to think," I said suddenly, tired at last of talking in abstractions, "that not only will our times and our deeds someday be the stuff of history books and intellectual discussions, but we ourselves? There are few now who can say they knew Fëanor, for instance, his favorite food or color, his hobbies when he wasn't creating legendary jewels, his annoying habits. Even his personality, his angry temperament, is little more than a cause for a historical effect. And when the Elves leave Middle-earth, there will be none who ever knew him. But still we talk about him."

"I'm guessing," said Faramir with a mischievous grin, "that Fëanor wasn't afraid of dogs and didn't bite his fingernails."

"That was uncalled-for."

"And I'm not sure what you're getting at."

I chewed on the side of my lip, trying to fit my words around my thoughts. "What I mean to say is – when our names appear as words on the page of historical records, people centuries in the future will recognize them, and immediately our great and valiant and world-changing deeds will come to mind, but how will they ever be able to envision us as our friends know us? For the sound of our voices, the way we laugh, the way we dress, the way we stand, and, yes, our nervous habits – things we take for granted because they're just a part of us? We don't know any of that about the greats we look up to in the past. Did they ever think that who they were in their own eyes would be forgotten?"

"Ah," said Faramir sagely, a knowing smile slowly lifting one corner of his lips. "You're having one of those."

"One of what?" I asked curiously, inclining my head to one side.

"What Boromir fondly calls – used to call, I mean," Faramir amended, his tone quieting slightly with grief – "'what must it have been like?' attacks."

"I suppose that would be the big brother restatement of what Gandalf named 'empathetic speculation,'" I observed with a laugh. "So I'm not the only one who does that?"

"Not at all," Faramir reassured me, hefting his wineglass so that the sunlight was refracted iridescently in the details of the crystal, and the liquid within shone a warm yellow-gold. I echoed his gesture, and we sipped a tacit toast to empathetic speculation.

"So you catch my meaning, then?" I asked.

"Yes, but I do not imagine that my name will call any instant recognition to the minds of future students," Faramir said casually. I noted neither bitterness nor wistfulness in his voice, only the merest hint of resignation.

"I beg to differ," I contradicted him politely. "After all, you did play your part in the great War of the Ring. Your name will be recorded and remembered through the ages, equal to anyone's."

"Except yours," Faramir teased me, his manner completely serious.

I swallowed uncomfortably. I still wonder whether I am equal to historical fame that outstrips that of my contemporary betters. I even wonder whether I am equal to any fame at all, though I know it is inevitable; what did I do that Faramir, for instance, could not have done if he had been in my place? And what could he perhaps have done that I in the end could not? Still, trying not to betray my doubt, I paused reflectively and answered gravely, "And Aragorn's and Gandalf's, yes, but surely equal to anyone else's."

Faramir caught my moment of discomfiture. I could see it in his eyes, a flash of regret and more than a little confusion as to the reason for my doubt, but he did not mention it. Like me, he feels that what is laid down should be left to lie, and he seemed to sense that to mention again what I had graciously deflected in the form of jest would be only to compound his error. So he laughed, as he knew he was expected to, and I continued, "What makes you think otherwise?"

"Truly, what part _did_ I play? I did little, other than sustain a grievous wound and lie abed while battle raged. No, I believe that I will only be remembered as the son of the mad steward who lit his own funeral pyre and the brother of the steward's elder son who succumbed to the evil temptation of the Ring."

"Oh, no, you'll be remembered as more than that," I protested with mock indignation. "You'll also be written in history as the husband of the woman who rode to battle in the armor of a man and slew the Witch-king of Angmar." I smiled slyly and added, "For that, I believe congratulations are in order."

Faramir, taken aback, sat with his mouth slightly open for a moment, then began, "How did you know – ?" and left off in bemusement.

My devious smile broadened and I replied, "My spies are everywhere. And very perceptive, as well. Especially when it comes to intelligence that others would rather keep secret for the time being." I chuckled, thinking fondly of my own personal experience with such things.

"And I imagine that their names are Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took?" Faramir said with a look half of amusement and half of exasperation.

"I did say that they were everywhere, did I not?" I returned. 

"But you will not reveal this happy secret beyond us, will you?" Faramir pressed anxiously. "I plan to make everything known in its due course with the proper amount of pomp and ceremony," he explained with a wry grin.

"Perfectly understandable," I agreed. "You may trust to my discretion." But remembering our previous topic of conversation, a thought sobered me again, and I said, "Faramir, your name will be in records of history not only for your relatives' fame."

"And why is that?" he asked, still half-laughing.

"Because you are the kind Man who succored two weary travelers in Ithilien, and treated them as guests despite that your law treated them as criminals. Because as a strong, noble, generous presence, you helped to maintain, for just a little longer, the sanity of one whose strength was steadily failing. And because you had the chance to take the Ring, and you refused, even though if I failed and in the end your decision proved ill for your people, it might have meant your life. But do not think that you will be remembered, then, only for what you did _not_ do; I find that in history, simply being kind and good is sadly underrated. You will be remembered for that – I will see to it." Then I suddenly realized self-consciously that I was becoming remarkably long-winded, and added lightly, "And I, of course, will be remembered as the greatest orator of our times." 

As I raised my wineglass to my lips to cover my mild embarrassment (and to allow myself to recover from the lump of overwhelming gratitude and unidentifiable emotion that was beginning to block my throat), Faramir too raised his glass, reaching it out toward me, and, his voice slightly hoarse as well, proposed a second toast: "To Frodo son of Drogo, the Third Age's greatest orator and the Fourth Age's greatest revisionist historian."

I laughed, and we both drank. Faramir half-filled his now-empty glass, and I once again noted the beauty of the pale gold liquid illuminated by the sunlight broken by the designs in the crystal. Then I raised my glass expectantly, and Faramir imitated my gesture, his eyebrows raised as he awaited my toast. "And to Faramir son of Denethor, the Third Age's most self-effacing hero and the Fourth Age's happiest husband and father."

It was Faramir's turn to laugh as we drank. Remembering when I tipped back my chair in the warm, laughter-filled kitchen of Bag End with a feeling of self-satisfaction as I did the same – it feels like lifetimes ago! – half a year before, I drained my glass.

Et voilà.* It's not bad, considering, though I need to refine my narrative style; as it is, I feel that I place too much emphasis on thought and mannerism. I fear that outside of conversation, I will never break myself of the habit of writing location descriptions in anal detail, though I kept those to a minimum in the above passage. Had I begun to denote our picnic site on the eastern end of a clearing amid a copse of cypress – I shudder to think. I would be writing well into next week.

For my next project, I must train myself to write in the third person, as Bilbo did in his book; I think that it adds the proper objectivity necessary for a historical record. As an experiment: Frodo is referring to himself by name. This makes him feel eerily like Sméagol. He fears that he will need a great deal of practice to adjust to replacing first-person pronouns with third-person pronouns and his own name before he can write fluently in this manner without commenting intermittently on how disturbing it is.

Perhaps my next project will instead be learning to use a bow and arrows. A child's training bow, of course. Faramir wouldn't let me near his. And I his elder!

* No, people in Middle-earth probably wouldn't use French expressions. Frodo probably would have actually said "a tiro" or something similar (the Sindarin for "and look at that"). I like to think that as the relationship between Quenya and Westron is like that between Latin and English, Sindarin is more the equivalent of French.

****

Author's Note: That entry was intentionally lighthearted, so do not complain about the lack of angst. You want angst, go read my Frodo-death fics. Yes, that was a plug.

That took WAY longer than it needed to. Two months! Two months since last I updated the "Random Musings"! I will make no promises, conjectures, hopes, or wild guesses as to how long the next entry will take, because not only is it unwritten, but I have four other fanfiction projects going at once, and schoolwork coming out my…ears.

(Plug #2) But the writings that are already posted will not go stale! Read and review them – after you review this, of course – if any of them interest you. Thank you!


	7. I suffer a rather violent 'What must it ...

June 8, Third Age 3019

****

I suffer a rather violent 'What must it have been like?' attack

While I am in Minas Tirith along with (most of) the rest of the Fellowship of the Ring – indeed, with most of the surviving consequential figures in the war of the Ring – I have been taking advantage of the opportunity and beginning to collect people's accounts for my book. (I mean my real book – the one with the actual story in it.) After all, the story told from my perspective alone would be very much incomplete, and rather dull besides. And depressing, the side of me inclined to self-pity adds.

Hearing the tales of what went on in my absence has been "an eye-opener," to use another apt expression of Sam's, and humbling as well: there were so many world-shaping events happening so quickly, so much splendor and heroism and heartache, that I feel at once very grand because I was such an instrumental part of it all and very small because I was but a part. And all these tales have caused me to speculate wonderingly about what all the other participants in this historic struggle must have felt as they witnessed new marvels with every day. Or, in Boromir's words, I was attacked by a storm of "what must it have been like?" questions. So here is a short list*:

- What must it have been like for an old, worldly-wise warrior to daily watch wondrous beings walk out of legend and the pages of children's fairy stories? 

- What must it have been like for a weary soldier who had lost all hope to see the sun rise over Helm's Deep and bring with it an unlooked-for miracle? 

- What must it have been like for those who walked the Paths of the Dead to watch in awe as the gray ghosts rose to follow the true King? 

- What must it have been like for the horses on the Paths of the Dead to be led into darkness and fear to what end** they knew not, and to follow only for the love of a master? 

- What must it have been like to despair on Pelennor Fields as black sails appeared on the seas, and then to behold, like a vision, Hope itself, manifest as a beacon of shining tree and stars? 

- What must it have been like to behold Lady Éowyn, magnificent and fair in her desperation, defying unafraid the Lord of the Nazgûl to defend her fallen king, perhaps to her own death? 

- What must it have been like for Aragorn to make the impossible choice to march an army to near-certain suicide with no hope but what rested on the strength of two hobbits alone in the Land of Shadow? 

- And what must it have been like for a common soldier, just one among six thousands prepared to fight hopelessly to the death at the Morannon, to suddenly to be a witness to the very moment of the Dark Tower's fall?

And egocentric as it may sound, I wonder whether anyone speculates about what it must have been like to stand in _my _shoes. Do they ask: What must it have been like to walk into certain death and then in the end to wake up alive?

And I would have to answer: It defies description. I myself am still trying to figure out just what it was like.

Comments from the modern-day "translator" (which is how I can justify my need to pedantically point out the use of literary techniques):

* Note the allusions that Frodo makes to his own journey through both comparison and contrast of his and Sam's experiences with the experiences he considers here.

** Another _double entendre_ (sorry, Professor Tolkien!) – "end" is most plainly used to mean "purpose" when talking about the horses, but if Frodo is making a veiled reference to Sam and his own curiosity about his closest companion's feelings, "end" should also be construed as "fate" or "outcome." 

****

Author's Note (continued)**: **And for those who might take offense that dear, practical, rational, loyal, intelligent Sam is being compared to a horse, willing to be led blindly and unquestioningly "for the love of a master," keep in mind that both Frodo and Tolkien were of the gentry. As much as Frodo loves and values Sam as a friend, he also addresses him as a child, calling him "lad," or "Master Samwise Gamgee" when, as I learned from Charles Dickens' _David Copperfield,_ an adult would be titled "Mister." Tolkien does that, too, as a matter of fact – note the chapter title "The Choices of _Master_ Samwise." Also note that when Sam, of the servant class, respectfully addresses his upper-class hobbit companions, he says "Mr. Frodo" and "Mr. Merry," but "Master Pippin" because only Pippin has not yet come of age. Sam is older than Merry, but he is still "Master Gamgee" to Frodo – certainly not malicious belittlement, but nonetheless a statement, however unintentional, of Sam's social inferiority.

Remember also (especially Rose Cotton, in answer to her review) that this is only a metaphor, not a renaming, and that with a metaphor come _all _of its implications. Yes, horses are domesticated servants to humans, but they are also traditionally viewed as noble both because of their unique relationships of mutual loyalty and love with their masters and because of their steadfastness, strength, and courage. Horses are praised in epic poetry, so it's not as if Frodo is _insulting_ Sam, nor is he calling him an animal. Note in the above paragraph the word _compared, _and remember that poets _compare_ people to animals (and vice versa) all the time.

One thing I really love about multi-chapter fics is that I can respond to reviewers' comments on previous chapters. So, Kathy B., to address your concerns: I do respect Tolkien for the realism and vividness with which he crafted his world, but we all good-naturedly rib those we love from time to time, and it can be quite a task to plow through all that lengthy description. (Ha! Look who's talking – Miss Neverending Sentences herself!)

And about the Sindarin/French thing: I had read the Quenya : Sindarin :: Finnish : Welsh analogy. My Quenya : Sindarin : Westron :: Latin : French : Modern English comparison referred mostly to _usage,_ not necessarily linguistic structure. Tolkien himself nicknamed Quenya "Elven-latin" because, like Latin, it is a "mostly dead" intellectual, formal, or ceremonial language; Sindarin, like French, is a living language that is related but dissimilar in sound to the dead language. Latin and French words, phrases, and expressions are an ingrained part of the educated English speaker's everyday vocabulary and commonly known as the languages of culture and the cultured, but virtually no native anglophone today makes offhand use of Finnish or Welsh. Incidentally, I did _not_ know that Tolkien hated all things French. I happen to think that French is a beautiful language and that Alexandre Dumas' _The Count of Monte Cristo_ is one of the best books I've ever read; the grave-rolling Professor and I must agree to disagree.

As a final item: Wow. That entry took a miraculously short amount of time. Think of it as recompense for the two-month hiatus. And sorry that the author's note is longer than the actual entry, but I am infamous for turning simple remarks into scholarly rants.


	8. I write something that is not a poem at ...

June 13, Third Age 3019  
I write something that is not a poem at all  
and then try to figure out what happened  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Sometimes it seems as if my finger is still there;  
I can still feel it, at home among the rest,  
And if I but flexed my hand I could extend them all again.  
I can still feel the cool weight of a simple gold band  
That feels so right, belonging on my hand,  
My belonging; my birthright, my due.  
Mere shadows remain of what is gone,  
Tangible shadows intangible,  
A moment caught in present memory;  
For the intuitive knowledge of rightness, of wholeness,  
Of completion without a thought of ever being incomplete,  
Was severed as well, lingers as well,  
A mirage, in reach, yet unreachable - but not too far...  
  
Sometimes it seems as if my finger is still there;  
But the pen falls from my infirm grasp,  
Falls from trembling fingers, the surety of long custom all lost.  
Sometimes it seems as if my finger is still there,  
But a glance, a movement, a blink,  
And it is gone.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Oh, dear...What was that? It didn't belong as prose, somehow, yet it didn't want to conform to any consistent rhyme scheme or rhythmic pattern. The above is a transcription because the original composition of the poem...rant...'Random Musing'...whatever it was...is so full of crossed-out and inserted words that no one would ever be able to know which were abandoned and which actually part of the final product, such as it is. I am certain that I will come back to it and compulsively cross more things out and insert more and then change my mind again about those, because I am never satisfied with what I write, alas; I am not like Bilbo.  
  
As to the content of that bit of writing (as I will refer to it, being at a loss to give it any more definite name) - I dropped my pen today. It wasn't the first time it had happened; in the days directly following when the bandages on my hand were reduced to something less than full Harad mummification and I could actually try to train myself to write with a grip adjusted to account for the missing finger, I lost count of the number of times I dropped the quill. I mean the number of times an hour. It was frustrating, but when I wasn't shredding paper or in tears, I laughed it off. I've gotten used to holding the pen differently and working around the impediment of the bandaging, which is hardly thick enough to be a hindrance anymore, but I continue to drop the pen from time to time for an entirely different reason.  
  
It is an odd phenomenon that has been occurring ever since the loss of that third finger on my right hand which earns me my dubious epithet. It feels like nothing's wrong, and everything is as it was, a sensation that today, as on previous days, lulled me into thinking I could hold the pen as I always had before, supported between thumb, index, and ring (no pun intended) finger. But naturally, since one of the fingers that I used as a brace is gone, the pen was insufficiently supported and fell. Unremarkable, really; all I had to do was adjust and rest the quill on my middle finger instead. But for some silly reason, the incident struck me as being deeply momentous, though I will not attempt to conjecture what it might subconsciously seem a coincidental symbol for. Or rather, I will not expound upon it at great length, because I am being ridiculous to think that adjusting the way I hold a pen now that I've lost a finger, now that my hand will never be the same, is like readjusting the way I look at life, having endured a journey that will leave me never the same.  
  
Yet, pretentiously metaphorical as it sounds, perhaps it is. And perhaps I'm a bleeding idiot who needs to learn not to explain, excuse, and apologize for his poetry (or whatever it is).  
  
But this poem I will not show to Gandalf.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Author's Note: I actually wrote that a really long time ago and had it in reserve. Eru knows there are more where that came from...  
  
Like my little Middle-earthified Egypt reference? I feel quite clever.  
  
Rose Cotton, about last entry's review: I added another paragraph to the author's note (like it needed more ranting) in response to your concerns, although half of the original note was to address those same concerns; I knew someone would express them. Also, you said I "further wrecked [your] faith in [my] Sam-writing." Out of curiosity, what had I done before? (Visualize a puppy that knows it's done something wrong and so is guilty about it and whimpering piteously but doesn't know why it's guilty, because I can't translate that into an emoticon, although I do have a little code sheet of emoticons.) 


	9. On weddings and other notes

Mid-year's Day (well, July 1, actually, as it is 3 o'clock in the morning)

****

On weddings and broodings

Well, I must say that I now have no regrets about not having left for home sooner. Princess Arwen, Lord Elrond's daugher, wed King Strider (I think I shall never tire of calling him that) today. Well, yesterday, truly. I have never been the sort to cry at weddings, though I spotted more than a few old women of Minas Tirith moved to tears by the beauty and splendor of it all. For my part, I was moved to laughter – the laugher of pure joy and wonder. History records will describe the affair in detail, so I need not; all I must tell is of my own awe at a day that mingles the triumph of the allegiance of Elf and Man-kind; the magnificence of the marriage of the monarchs of a realm; and, most miraculous, the simple sweetness of the union of two people who truly love each other. Never mind that this love is one whose fulfillment forces a woman to sacrifice eternal life in paradise, and she freely chooses the love – simply that it is love is enough to make such a thing miraculous. Perhaps it is because I have never really known love of quite this sort that I am so in awe of it; or perhaps I would be even more in awe if I had.

~~~~~~~

On a more personal note – and much less momentous – I will be writing little in this book (or any other) for a while. Why? Well, because of something Pippin said a few days ago. He's the one who's been nagging me the most to come out of hiding, so to speak, but I've lately observed that others have also noticed my continued absence from the bustle of activity that is Minas Tirith. Sam in particular – I was watching him closely out of guilt, I suppose; he looked tense and worried when he saw me today, but relaxed visibly whenever I smiled and broke into a broad grin whenever I laughed. I think he's afraid that I've become depressed. So is Pippin, apparently, though he is both more open and more good-humored about it. "You've spent enough time in your shell, Cousin Turtle. You can poke your head out into the sunlight. To put it plainly: Stop holing yourself up in your room, moping," I think his words were.

Moping? I'm insulted. I haven't been moping. Brooding, more like. Brooding is an art; moping is just cheap imitation.

~~~~~~~

July 15, Third Age 3019

****

A parting gift

As this is a short note, I thought I might as well append it to two other short notes –

I went to see the King today about the matter of heading for Rivendell and then for home, and in the course of our conversation, Queen Arwen gave me a unique – and unexpected – token. The explanation that went with it was yet more unexpected. Curiously, like the words of Elvish songs that stay imprinted upon the memory as though they, with the sweet sharpness of a knife of starlight, carved their image in the listener's brain, the words she spoke are now graven in my mind: "In my stead you shall go, Ring-bearer" (meaning to the Grey Havens and what lies across the Sea beyond) "when the time comes, and if you desire it. If your hurts grieve you still and the memory of your burden is heavy, then you may pass into the West, until all your wounds and weariness are healed." At the moment, I have no desire other than to return home – first home to Bilbo, then home to the Shire. I wonder if there is something Lady Arwen knows that I do not. Yes, I am in pain – never is there a moment when my memories do not weigh heavily upon me – but I intend to stay in the Shire; grow old, crotchety, and nostalgic; and let my wounds scar and tell me about the weather.

****

Author's Note: I am sorry sorry sorry that I have waited so long to write this! Five explanations (excuses): 1) It's summer vacation, so I have time, which naturally means I have absolutely no inspiration or motivation to do what I now have time to do; 2) I went to the Czech Republic and Hungary for 2 weeks (on tour with my choir! Singing in medieval castles and cathedrals! How cool is that?) with no access to the LotR books for reference; 3) I've been occupied with books, summer school, a social life (yes, that is a new acquisition), etc.; 4) I've been writing a bunch of "Inuyasha" and _Ender's Game_ fanfiction, as I'm moving on to new obsessions (but don't worry, I'm still obsessed with LotR!); and 5) I'm a lazy butt. Also sorry it's so short, but this was kind of a taking-care-of-business entry; the long, inspired entries will come a little later. And I'm not giving up on this story (in case you were worried, wondering, whatever), because I still have my inspired entries waiting in the wings!


	10. I consider the stars and wax poetical A...

September 30, Third Age 3019

****

I consider the stars and wax poetical. Again.

I did not lie when I said that I would not be writing in this book for quite a while; it has been months, and I have not touched it! This and that have kept me from it, and Pippin, of course, is very proud of me for emerging from my shell. But here I am in Rivendell, and if this is not a place for musing, then where is? I have become pensive again, here among the waterfalls and autumn leaves, as I come nearer and nearer to returning home.

So I decided to sit out under the stars to think and write. I do not think I have ever seen them look so beautiful. Maybe they feel at home here, among the People of the Stars in the Last Homely House east of the Sea. Minas Tirith, too, is beautiful, in its high, ancient, sculpted way, as are the wild, wind-swept, golden plains of Rohan; but no place is as beautiful as this, woven through as it is with the Elves' sweet singing, surrounded by the trees that I can almost hear singing themselves, and seeming to be as much a living part of the hills as those trees. It is just as beautiful at night, if not more so. I can hear the myriad songs and tales drifting from the firelit hall in a slightly discordant sort of harmony, with the roar of wind and waterfall as bass and the trill of crickets keeping time; the lights of the buildings are a mirror for Elbereth's lights in the sky.

Well, I suppose Lothlórien is as beautiful. And the Shire, to those who love her.

It's a…a _sharp_ beauty here under the stars, for lack of a better word. Sharp and cold like sunlight sparkling through the edges of ice, and as fragile, for all that this place has lasted for three thousand years, and the stars for eons longer. This beauty still feels fragile, like an image wrought in crystal so fine that a single touch would break it, or like the crystal-thin surface of a dream. It does seem too beautiful to be anything but a dream, intricate and vividly bright, but delicate, intangible. Strange, isn't it, and sad, that I have seen the pinnacle of beauty, here, and the pittance of ugliness and desolation in Mordor, but I find that only the ugliness feels real.

While I am writing, I might as well mention this: that I am glad to have seen Bilbo, but disappointed as well that he is not quite as I remembered him; he is not so keen of mind and spirit as he was once, old age having found him at last, after he eluded it for so long. He has been interviewing Merry, Pippin, Sam, and me about our adventures, perhaps hoping to write our tales himself; and I know he is deeply interested, but he does seem to fall asleep over his notes and forget what he has already asked. (He does, however, remember that he is now one hundred and twenty nine years of age, and very near to overtaking the Old Took; he has cherished this goal fondly for years, and it has long been a point of pride that his chances of accomplishing it are so good.) I should have expected as much – the Ring is no longer prolonging his youth; of course I knew that – but I still feel sorrow. To me, it seems a bit like the fading of the power of the elven rings and their works when the One Ring was destroyed: a sacrifice that must inevitably be made to defeat a great evil, but a sacrifice no less. Rivendell, too, must fade in time, this gorgeous place where the ancient and the living and all of time seem caught together in crystal. But the stars will not fade – not until the ending of the world, when no eyes are left to gaze at them and no mind is left to wonder. And although that sounds terribly pretentious and somewhat trite, it is nonetheless rather comforting.

I wonder, after I have left, if I will ever see Bilbo again. I will miss him greatly. He is something of a reminder of the years before the Quest, the father of my tweenage years, when the stories he told of Elves and dragons were the closest to peril and adventure I would ever come. Those memories, now, are surreal, and saddening, but they too are strangely comforting.

****

Author's Note: I cannot believe how long it has been since the last time I updated this fic. Four months! I feel so awful! *sniff* No doubt many of the steady readers have long given up on it, but c'est la vie. Maybe some new readers will find it. The good news is that except for one more possible intervening entry that I have not written, the next several are already done. And that means that they were the insistent, substantial ideas, not just my nebulous rambling. So really, stay tuned this time! Thank you for your patience. :-)


	11. I revisit The Prancing Pony and fall asl...

October 29, Third Age 3019

****

I revisit _The Prancing Pony _and fall asleep again

Gandalf, Merry, Pippin, Sam, and I returned to Bree and have been staying at the _Prancing Pony_ inn since yesterday. The place awakens memories in a most peculiar way: Mr. Butterbur's agreeable chatter, the friendly warmth of the atmosphere, the easy welcome of the company; talking of Elessar the King as Strider, the weathered, darkly mysterious Ranger sitting in the shadows in the corner of the common room (and Butterbur's unawareness that he was anything else); Sam's overjoyed reunion with his dear once-companion Bill; the questions about my 'book' on hobbits living outside the Shire that I invented out of desperation, as I thought I knew desperation more than a year ago. Perhaps returning here feels so strange because it was the last bit of civilization I saw before taking the wound of the Morgul knife at Weathertop. This inn stirs recollections of a time before I knew pain, a time that now seems so remote that it might as well have been another life, and another hobbit who lived it. How could I know, when last I saw this place – naïve, careless, and unworldly hobbit that I was – what dark paths my journey would lead me along? And had I known, how could I have imagined that I would return to look back wistfully on my lost naïveté? It has been so long since I last tasted something so homey as the beer brewed here in the Northwest, near my own country. It tastes to me sweeter than the _miruvor_ of Imladris, yet at the same time more bitter than the foulest draught brewed by orc, for I can never taste it with the same uncomplicated satisfaction that I once knew; there will always be the conscious thought in my mind that such simple pleasures are truly miraculous, and thus they will never be simple again.

Like the piercing, crystalline beauty of Rivendell, the familiar, earthy comfort of this place is like an entirely different world from the hell I lived in Mordor – surely they cannot exist in the same reality; surely one or the other must be a dream. And it must be the one in which there is no pain. I am falling back into the cradle of sleep, returning to my pleasantly lethargic dream, but taking with me the shreds of my harshly vivid waking hours: the bright armor and shields of Gondor and Rohan that two of my companions bear, mighty, warlike, and terribly incongruous in this relaxed and peaceful setting; the finger gone from the hand curled around my ale mug; the ghostly ache in my left shoulder; the ever-present memories of thirst and darkness and unending weariness; the surreal feeling itself.

And yet, I must remind myself, not all that I found in the waking world was cruel and painful. It grieved me to part with Aragorn, and Legolas and Gimli as well, for they were all true companions; I was sorry when the Lady Galadriel had to leave us sometime in September – a parting which made clearer to me that I was slipping back into a smaller, humbler world – for her grace and wisdom and beauty are surpassed by none. I am sorry that I will likely never see Lothlórien again, or ever in the golden spring whose praises Legolas sang so ardently; Rivendell, too, with its something of everything but the Sea, I will miss. But still, the _Prancing Pony_ is a comforting dream to return to – especially because, as it is so close to the Shire, and so much like the Shire in its congenial familiarity, being here makes my own home feel, at last, to be within reach. For much of the Quest, the Shire was the foothold meant for other feet than mine, the one place that would remain safe no matter what dangers I wandered into, and returning there was the distant hope I clung to; as I neared Mordor, the Shire became to me little more than a bittersweet fond memory and an ideal of what was to be saved with the defeat of the Enemy; in the heart of Mordor, it was a half-forgotten whisper in my mind, fading with every step; and after the War, though I knew I would soon be on my way home, I still only half believed that such a wondrous thing might be true. Now, it truly becomes clear to me that I am going home, because I can see it here; and the people will be just as silly and provincial and self-important as they are here, and their hearts will be as warm and simple, and I will know, having seen what I have seen, that it is a dream, but Eru knows I will be smiling in my sleep.

****

Author's Note: Poor Frodo – doomed to be disappointed.

Hurrah! Next one's already written! And the one after that, and the one after that… So how is it that I've gotten my act together so quickly after four months of stalling? Well, it probably has something to do with the fact that _The Return of the King _is coming out in theaters a week from now and has rekindled my obsession – and made me truly anxious about the changes that the filmmakers made! As in what did they screw up this year? And what's all this about Frodo telling Sam to go home…? No, can't think about it, too painful. Ah, well, I'm sure it will still be epic and powerful and beautiful, and I will still be in tears at the end.

Thank you, all you steady readers who are still coming back to review! All the waiting has not been in vain (I hope)!


	12. Despair

November 3, Third Age 3019

****

Despair

I have failed. I have failed. Did I think I could save the Shire, even if nothing else was left unsullied by darkness? Did I think there would always be a foothold somewhere, even though my feet might never find it again? I was wrong. Nothing, nothing can escape the Shadow; nothing can I hope to protect forever. Did I think all had been won? All I strove for is lost, lost.

And yet I cannot comprehend what it is that is lost. The virgin innocence of a people that has known neither blood nor tyranny? The vibrant woods and fields of a land that bloomed under the hoe and the hand, untouched by the machine? What does any of that mean? The bright, friendly, colorful doors of the familiar rows of smials. My woods. My reading tree. The Party Tree in the clearing where I danced so long ago. For these I know how to weep. And Sam is right – in some ways, this is worse than Mordor. I face now my failure, not my test. I face my powerlessness, still more proof of my cursed fallibility when so much rests on me. I face this evil, this desolation, in the only place that I thought could be exempt from it always; the one place that I so needed to keep from it; the place that I gave up my peace, my life, my heart and blood to save from it. Had I but come home sooner… This I could have stopped.

The dawn I thought would rise without me, the dawn not my doing, is truly not my dawn; the Shire that will bloom again by no deed of mine can never be my Shire. And what is mine? Only my regret, my emptiness, my failure. The clothes on my back, my own bare feet, the Elf-woven cloak on the rack by the door, the little white gem I wear around my neck.

****

Author's Note: OK, remember how on chapter 4, I said I was inspired to come up with the ending after drinking coffee and accidentally staying awake on the caffeine buzz until 4:30 A.M.? That was…when, in October 2002? Well, I wrote this entry on the same caffeine. That's how long it's been waiting. Ooh, and I told you the "not my dawn" thing would be back! Three cheers for continuity!


	13. I repeal the ban on selfpity and, once a...

February 26, Third Age 3020

****

I repeal the ban on self-pity and, once again, promptly proceed to wallow in it

I wept today, though I scarcely knew why; nothing upsetting in particular happened. I berated myself after for my weakness, and sat awhile and pondered why this sudden outpour of misery had come on. It was as though a dear friend had died, I determined, and I had mourned him as I thought his due when it had happened, but because of a mixture undetected of numbness, preoccupation, and disbelief, only today had the fact really registered that _he is dead; he is gone and I will never see him again, _and so I mourned him afresh. I knew it was not Boromir for whom I grieved, for had it been, my tears surely would have started anew upon thinking of him; but who else had died that I had known?

It was myself, I answered, reacting with barely a start to this revelation – that Frodo Baggins fellow I had known very well back in the Shire. He and I had both taken grievous hurt at Weathertop, and while I had been healed and quite well enough to travel by the time the Company left Rivendell, he, poor Hobbit, had never really recovered. He ailed ever more as we went on, finding some brief respite in Lothlórien and again in Ithilien (though by that time he was sadly far gone), and finally died quietly in his nightmare-troubled sleep some cold, thirsty night on the vast, barren expanse of Gorgoroth. I think I must have been too caught up in my own troubles to fully realize he was gone, though at times, when Sam brought it up, I think I came close to understanding that a part of me had gone missing for good. It was today, when I had naught else to think of or despair about, that I was struck as if by lightning with the terribly final meaning of _dead,_ and the realization was so awful and so desolating that it made me weep for my loss, which I fear can never be repaired.

I wonder what I would say of him, were I called upon to give a eulogy (being that he and I were so very close all our lives) – after all, when one is mourning a death, one must first and foremost celebrate a life, though more often than not, it is a challenge to convince the mourners of this. Mr. Baggins and I were counterparts, one might say, and one would hardly be complete without the other. He was a cheerful Hobbit, with a sunny outlook on life and a fond devotion to his homeland of the Shire. He enjoyed his pipe and, I admit – for no one is without his faults, even our most beloved – his drink, and I shall never forget when his love for mushrooms was his downfall, and while I can look back on the incident with a hearty (if wistful) laugh, he never found it at all amusing. While he was the even less eager to embark upon the Quest of the Ring, being that his attachment to his home was the stronger, he was the one to make the most of every situation we and our companions encountered. We shared between us what little wit was our lot; his was the most part of the quick and clever tongue, and mine was the judgment and the caution – perhaps the wisdom, it can be said, though our share of wisdom was even smaller than that of wit. He was considerably more open than I; it was he who first chose to trust the foul-looking yet fair-seeming Ranger named Strider, and he who finally deemed Faramir the man of Gondor worthy of trust as well, while I followed suit. Were any such person to ask for my faith unproven now that he is gone, I cannot say if I would give it. Yet while he was quicker to trust, he was quicker also to suspicion (being quicker, in general, to judge), and it was I who pitied Gollum the more – perhaps because I feared more that he was what I could become, because I understood better how he had wasted under the influence of the Ring, and it was I who finally fell under its evil command, where perhaps the Frodo who is gone would not have. It was I who forgave Gollum in the end. And it was I who was able to make my peace with my failure; with the part that Gollum was destined to play; with my role, like Gollum's, as no more than a pawn in the game played by fate; and with the idea of my own impending death.

The other Frodo Baggins' was the optimism, mine the patience; his the dogged determination, mine only the grim despair; his the hope, his the dedication, mine simply the single-minded desperation. But such qualities as he possessed do not withstand long an utter absence of joy; when my hope and my optimism met with a darkness that overcame them, they began to fail, and when all reason for hope died, the keeper of my hope died with it. His were the strength and the will that only come with having some sort of hope, and when he was gone, mine left me as well, and in the darkness of Mordor I could not have gone on without another counterpart to lend me these.

But what I could not say, were I praising and lamenting the deceased part of Frodo Baggins, is that the companion who took the place of my previous other half, I think, was hardier and more determined, and if possible fit even more seamlessly into the empty chasm in my being than the person who had filled it before. And he loves me far more than did the other part of myself – before Sam truly became my other half.

Yet I cannot forever rely on Sam to provide what is dead in me. He will live ever the more fully for his experiences, dark and wonderful, on the Quest; he will open his heart ever the more and love ever the more his home and the people who live there. I cannot take these opportunities away from him by always clinging to his steadfastness, anchoring him to the darkness that lingers in me still – filling the crevices in my soul where my departed "friend" once resided, the crevices that open again as Sam's way ever strays from mine – as in Mordor he anchored me to light and hope. I wonder where I may find the part of me that is gone; perhaps it awaits me in Valinor, in the Halls of Mandos where the soul of Beren waited for Lúthien, his other half. Or perhaps it is fully and truly dead, and flies wherever the spirits of Men, and Hobbits their kindred, go when they die, the only place where the mortal Children of Ilúvatar can go but Elves cannot. If this is so, perhaps I can only be whole again when I die as did the other part of me, suffocated by the hopeless dread of Mordor.

And here I go – I can't help it; I'm crying again. What if this dear friend is lost forever, and we will never be reunited? Without him, the joy I found once in beauty and the complete solace that friendship once gave are faded, gone. It never occurred to me before that I had parted with these things long ago and did not say farewell to my light and my hope, did not savor the warmth they afforded me and rejoice in the simple things that pleased me before the time came when all chance to enjoy them ever again was gone forever.

Still, I do not think that I have lost completely the ability to laugh, or to love, or to live for the while that is allotted me yet. I may dwell mostly on my miseries, but my life is at least half-blessed in that I, though I suffered loss as do too many who play a part in war, live yet to write, to speak, to laugh, and to love, and by one path or another I have helped to give the same gift to all those who may live in freedom of the Shadow that is fled. Even when mourning death, after all, it is important first and foremost to celebrate life.

****

Author's Note: Believe it or not, this entry was the beginning of the Random Musings. I wrote it and it was just another angsty introspective vignette that I write way too many of, and then I thought, while I'm writing a whole ton of them, why don't I make them into a collection? So I did…and I realized that this kind of a revelation would probably come after some less earth-shaking ones, so I posted a few other of my ideas first. Then I decided that maybe Frodo wouldn't have this particular epiphany in Minas Tirith – maybe it should wait until the Shire. And so it did, and about a year and four months after I wrote it, this, the progenitor of "The Random Musings of Frodo Baggins" – my magnum opus, as things stand right now – is finally being published. I feel like saying "Happy birthday, Random Musings," and so I will.

No, I didn't set it on the Breaking of the Fellowship and Boromir's deathday for any particular reason, other than that a) it said "late Feb./early March 3020" at the top of this document for awhile, and I thought, "Aha, there's a significant date around there, I think I'll use it!" and b) I briefly mentioned Boromir in the entry, so why not?

A last note – though I don't terribly often mention reviewers by name, I would like to acknowledge the steady readers from before my four-month disappearance from the face of the earth who returned afterward: shirebound, Tathar, Kathy B., and mali that is called mali2 (sorry, Monty Python reference). Thank you for remembering me, having me on Author Alert and neglecting to take me off, whatever.


	14. I deserve some self pity, damn it

September 22, Third Age 3020

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I deserve some self-pity, damn it

If, as I have realized, a part of me is dead, then why should not the rest of me go with it? Why is a part of me still alive? How could it ever leave off its grieving to smile, and laugh, and make jokes about its pain?

These questions have run ceaselessly through my head since last I opened this book more than six months past. Suddenly, I could not bear to read my lighthearted earlier entries, knowing that there was no justification for the relief I felt back then – that whether or not it was my struggle that enabled it, what I had fought for _had_ been won, and that my ordeal must be over. Did I force myself to laugh then, I with my long-standing contempt of people who are shamelessly sorry for themselves? Did I shy away from my own pain because I did not want to acknowledge that I shouldn't begrudge myself a bit of self-pity, and that I was the only one who did begrudge it? I mocked the fear of my nightmares, I laughed about my difficulties with the finger that was _bitten _frommy hand, I wrote of my own half-death with good humor half a year ago, and why? Because I felt that I needed to be stoical about the maiming of my soul as well? I have never stopped feeling the pain of my memories, and I allowed the Shire to become another casualty in this war – though it has begun to mend and will heal quickly, thanks to Sam and Lady Galadriel.

But I am a casualty that now I fear will not be mended. My ordeal is _not_ over, despite my initial feeling of relief; perhaps that was only a wish. I thought, when I felt a twinge of my old wound last October, that only memory, triggered by the nearness of the place where I sustained that wound, brought it on. But on March 13, nowhere near to the pass of Cirith Ungol, I was more than pained by the scar of the spider's sting on the back of my neck; I fell into present memories of my torment – of Mordor. Fever fit, hallucination, whatever it was – it felt too real. I could feel the weight of the Ring around my neck, burning in a wheel of fire on my breastbone, and I reached for it – I wanted it, wanted to know it was there – but instead Queen Arwen's gem met my grasp, cool and intricately crafted, so unlike the smooth, simple band I fully expected and fully desired to find. I should have been reassured and relieved to find that it was only a fever dream that caused me to feel the Ring there, but I was disappointed: the corrupted part of my soul grieved that it was gone; my own heart grieved to find that even in its death, I still wanted it. It was not there to force me to desire it, to preserve it, but the desire had not gone. And that may be the worst unmended wound of all, for if not the desire, then the grief pains me even when my shoulder, neck, and hand are quiet.

And so I closed this book, and locked it away from my sight, my hopes of healing to live out a peaceful, joy-rich life in the Shire – hopes that had already suffered irreparable damage when I returned to find my homeland no longer untouched by the Shadow – all but dead, along with what in me still had the strength to give her, my home, all the love I owe her. I did not know what I had left to give; I was sure that all my love and ardor and spirit had been destroyed when the Ring fell, or when I claimed it there on Mount Doom, or perhaps when I first took on the burden and it began to eat at my heart. The first deluge of utter despair subsided, of course, and I took care to appear as normal and cheerful as ever to Sam and Rose. But in my mind, the memory of the thoughtless optimism in the earlier pages of my 'Random Musings' grew out of proportion to leer at me, to laugh mockingly at me because it laughed at all.

Half a year went by, and I told myself not to be oppressed by the relentlessly vital summer sun; not to resent the laughter and liveliness of children; not to begrudge Sam the peace and completeness I could see in his smile when he tended his garden, his back aching, his fingers crusted with dirt, and all of him drenched in sweat. Whenever I tried to divert myself by helping Sam in the garden, I could feel flowers flinching away from my hands, however I wanted to believe it was only my pessimistic imagination. They sensed the brooding darkness in me; they sensed that I did not love them as I ought, or could not love them, just for a simple delight in growing things, the delight that lends gentleness to Sam's touch. Of course, it is equally likely that the flowers simply sensed that I didn't know what I was doing.

And it just slipped out again, that elusive sense of humor that has no right to exist.

The days have grown shorter and cooler; twilight, the time for reflection, comes sooner with every day. And October nears as well, when I fear I shall have to face the pain again. If I do, I wish to face it with a clearer mind, having achieved some sort of resignation out of my bitterness, if never acceptance or peace. So I opened this book again – on my birthday, interestingly enough – and faced my fear of its laughter, and laughed. Yes, I suppose I still do find myself amusing.

__

How can I still laugh? I must ask myself, and for once answer unflinchingly. In part, of course, it is because the Shadow is fled and the King has returned, because the war was fought and won in the end, because valor has been rewarded with joy in life or honor in death. Even Gandalf laughed for pure mirth after the darkness departed; how could one not laugh? Although the great Shadow must cast a smaller shadow that will fade in time but never truly flee, the light that may shine when the dark has passed is "like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!" (an apt description that only Samwise could be wise enough to compose). And, in part, I still laugh because I am not a pessimist. I am not as optimistic as I once was, but I think that out of the ashes of the half of my soul that was burned away, I have begun to build a new sense of joy – a graver joy, but no less true.

But I suppose another part of the answer is that I do not suffer as much as I might if I clearly remembered all of what passed in Mordor. I remember fire, and thirst, and weariness, and pain, but little more than this general impression of torment. I suppose it must be because I was hardly even thinking anymore, let alone thinking in words; my mind simply stopped working, trying to shield itself from the darkness by retreating into its own darkness. Images have begun to return, and I to piece them together, but little else. But I remember that Sam was my light – the only light that shone into my benighted soul.

My truly clear memories stop…sometime in the Tower of Cirith Ungol and start again when Gollum attacked Sam and me on the slopes of Mount Doom…everything after that is perfectly lucid. And I wish I could truly say that the Ring had fully possessed my unwilling consciousness and commanded my unwitting body to put it on when I gave into it; but it merely spoke to the ever-growing part of my heart that wanted to give in. No one – not even I – could blame me if my whole heart had been struggling against it even as I gave myself up; but the Ring was clever. So clever that at the end, I hardly knew it was my enemy; all I knew was that when I obeyed it and put it on, there was no more pain. That I remember because – and it shames me even now to admit it to this page, to myself – my mind was awake again, or thought it was. _I_ did not choose to put on the Ring, perhaps, but what I had become did.

I think it almost surprising, now, that after I returned to Minas Tirith, my first question about the parts of the War of the Ring of which I myself could not give a firsthand account was to ask Sam about the journey through Mordor that I could not remember. I suppose that I felt – or wanted to be – ready to confront what I should not have had to ask someone else about at all. I felt that I had to face it before I could call myself worthy to face anything else. And he told me that in the heart of the Land of Shadow, I could not remember the rabbit stew that Sam made for us in Ithilien. I can hardly believe it of a memory that is so dear to me now. And I think it wounded Sam deeply to learn that I could not remember, though he never blamed me; it wounded him more deeply than the loss of his beloved pots and pans. Dear Sam.

But to return to my question – how can I laugh? How, if I have any memory at all of the pain? How, if I know what it took from me? How, if I know that I failed, and that only by chance did the earth and I survive?

Because I'd go mad if I didn't. I _have_ to laugh and love and find joy in what joy is left to me, so I do. I could not live, else.

There. I've faced it and answered as unflinchingly as I could. Did I flinch? Yes, I did. My clear memories stop after I was stripped and shamed and beaten in the tower of Cirith Ungol, all the time saying over and over to myself that the Ring was gone, Sauron would soon have it, and all the world would fall. But what selfishly concerned me the most at the time was that my whole life, or what remained of it, would be torture and slavery and pain and shame – and there would be no end to the shame of knowing that I was not strong enough to carry the burden that was mine.

__

Now I've answered unflinchingly, and now I'm going to have a good, long cry and a better, longer nap.

…and there's that unreasonable sense of humor again.

****

Author's Note: Well, this is just my interpretation. I've read angst wherein Frodo remembers everything perfectly clearly and is a lot more screwed up than my Frodo. I'm writing one that fights to be able to live happily in Middle-earth for longer, but nonetheless has a lurking and sometimes surfacing suspicion all along that he can't.

OK, since I've now seen _The Return of the King_ twice since my last post, here's my assessment: WTF? What was with Denethor flying in a flaming ball off the cliff? And Gandalf beating him up? And the who-stole-the-lembas-from-the-cookie-jar crap with Gollum, Sam, and Frodo? And Frodo the Spider Web Mummy (God, that was undignified!)? And the Arwen-dying-somehow-because-of-Sauron randomness? I knew Saruman's demise and the Houses of Healing were going to be missing and are going to be on the extended DVD, but it still bugged me. I adore the Éowyn and Faramir love story! But otherwise, it was great. The scene where Faramir's suicide charge and Pippin's song were intertwined was wonderfully artistic; the interweaving of the desperate stand at the Black Gate and Frodo and Sam's struggle up Mount Doom was heartbreaking (two lines that really get to me: Sam's "I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you" and Aragorn's "For Frodo"); and the Grey Havens scene made me cry in the book, so they'd really have to have screwed it up for it not to make me cry in the movie.

Keeping the rant short. Next entry may or may not be written. Foreseeing about…twenty entries total? Some of the last ones are probably going to be very short, not because I'm rushing to get it over with or feeling uninspired, but because Frodo's thoughts are becoming desultory and brevity is the soul of profundity, as I said in chapter 3.


	15. I dropped my pen again

October 28, Third Age 3020  
I dropped my pen again…  
  
…and wrote:  
  
Sometimes it seems as if my finger is still there;  
But the pen falls from my infirm grasp,  
Falls from trembling fingers, the surety of long custom all lost;  
But it is gone, and the fallen pen  
Must find a new resting place in my hand,  
And I must find a new grip  
And try to write again.  
  
And as I wrote the last time I commented upon such an occurrence, a year and a half ago: "Unremarkable, really; all I had to do was adjust and rest the quill on my middle finger instead. But for some silly reason, the incident struck me as being deeply momentous, though I will not attempt to conjecture what it might subconsciously seem a coincidental symbol for. Or rather, I will not expound upon it at great length, because I am being ridiculous to think" that finding a new way of holding a pen is obscurely like – like finding a new grip on life. Like learning how to live again.  
  
Yet…perhaps it is. Perhaps training myself to write with a missing finger is like learning how to live again, missing the part of me that truly loved life. Perhaps it is like starting over, beginning anew, reborn from the ashes of my finger and my soul.  
  
Still – my writing will always be slower now, and my handwriting a little messier…  
  
~~~~~~~~~  
  
Author's Note: Part 2 of Chapter 8, in case you don't remember that long ago. I'm not even sure if I do… Argh. Did it again – dropped off the face of the earth for several months. This seemed like a good day to reappear. Why? Because it's March 25, of course! Ring Day! 


	16. I watch the snow and do not wonder

**December 25, Third Age 3020**

**I watch the snow and do not wonder**

            I watched snow paint the Yuletide white today.  It was a gentle snow, in keeping with the mild, clement weather that this blessed year has brought to the Shire.  I stood outside the door of Bag End, staring upward into the silver-white sky and watching the soft white dots drift to the ground, swift but light and silent save for the whispering _hush_ of their almost imperceptible impact on the bare branches of trees.  The snow rested on the tops of the branches as though some great painter had carefully lined their sinuous gray-silver forms in white.  Some of the snowflakes were large enough that I could even make out their intricate crystalline star-like forms.  When the blanket of white on the ground folded and crunched beneath my feet, the edges glittered in the muted light.  The Blue Mountains in the distance were great ethereal shapes wreathed and veiled in pale gray mist.  The world was luminous with silver, gray, and white, soft and hushed and sparkling.  It should have been a revelation.  I should have watched the snow's light, graceful, whirling dance with awe and wonder, as I watched that first rain in Minas Tirith, exulting in the silver sky and the song of the water.

            But I didn't.  I knew that it was beautiful, but I couldn't quite feel it.  I felt too tired, and that odd empty feeling was in my stomach again.  It makes me miss the half of me that died; he would have stuck out his tongue to catch the snowflakes like Rosie did, giggling, when she followed me outside into the snow to tell me to put a coat on under that cloak.  But who I was a year and a half ago was still swept up in the joy and wonder of having been reborn.  Now that has begun to fade, just as the awe of the star-host wanes when we see it every night of our lives, as I wrote that Spring.  The simple and glorious sights of nature are slowly being drained of their novelty, as I feared.  I hoped I would learn how to live again, not forget!  I hope now that this loss of a child's wonder means only that my normal life is resuming, that, save for being more solemn and weighted with grimmer memories, I am returning to the life I once knew.  Or perhaps I am simply growing old.  I hope it is nothing more.

            I think, though, that the sunset and the stars still kindle some awe in me.  I will truly be afraid when they are no longer magnificent.


	17. Just musing

July 28, Third Age 3021

**Simply musing**

I don't have much to say today. I just needed to write something besides my damned storybook. I am writing Mordor from Sam's recollections, and it hurts far more than if I were writing my own. I made one great choice and sacrifice when I took on the Burden; Sam made sacrifices every single day, choosing hundreds of times to deny himself a mouthful of water or bread when that was all our hearts could conceive of to want, to take just a little more weight upon his breaking back and into his breaking heart, and all for my sake. But I was a shell then, burned and hollowed out by the fire without and within. I do not wholly remember it – my mind has put up walls against those memories, for else it would break – but Sam saw what I had become, and it hurt him anew every day, while my soul had been numbed by the long, unceasing pain and time and memory had lost any meaning. I cannot write it any longer, knowing that my suffering, in some ways, was not the deepest, and that for love of me, one _I_ love felt pain.

Empty…empty is what I feel most days. I do not constantly the feel sharp, fiery pain of my wounds, but something has left me partway empty, and it is an ache half like hunger and half like fear – fear of I don't know what. Of emptiness, perhaps. Of the horrible, terrifying prospect of _nothing._

There are two things that have been said to me that I have never forgotten and will never forget:

"If your hurts grieve you still and the memory of your burden is heavy, then you may pass into the West, until all your wounds and weariness are healed."

"Do not expect me to wish you good health and long life. You will have neither. But that is not my doing. I merely foretell."

One was said with kindness and compassion, the other with the utmost of hate and bitterness, but I think that they have something to do with each other. And with a dawn that was not mine, and a Shire that cannot be mine, and a little white gem I wear – but that _is_ mine. It was a gift.

**Author's Note: **After more than a year's hiatus, I think I'm actually going to try to finish this fic. Doubtless the people who were following it have given up on it; maybe it'll find some new followers – a faint hope; but I don't want it to die with unfinished business. Then it will haunt me.

See Chapter 12 for full fun and understanding of the last two sentences.


	18. Another WMIHBL attack

"According to Elvish legend, _ele_ was a primitive exclamation 'behold!' made by the Elves when they first saw the stars. From this origin derived the ancient words _êl_ and _elen,_ meaning 'star'…" – Appendix of _The Silmarillion_

September 20, Third Age 3021

**I consider the stars and have another "W.M.I.H.B.L?" attack**

What must it have been like to suddenly awaken to life out of nothingness, and to look up and behold a beauty so far beyond words that the only fitting name it can ever be given is "Behold!"?


	19. I leave home

October 7, Third Age 3021…or is it the Fourth Age already?

**I leave home, and take my non-diary with me**

I am writing this from one of the last places I ever expected to be writing: the deck of a ship. Not only because I was afraid I would be sick if I attempted to write on a moving surface, but because I never truly thought I would cross the Sea, even when Queen Arwen gave me her token and told me what it might be for. I'm not sure I even knew until I was boarding the ship. I did not want to leave the Shire again, after all I had fought through to be able to return to it. I did not want to miss the births of Sam and Rosie's children, of whom I know there will be many more, or their coming-of-age feasts and, in turn, their marriages. I did not want to miss Merry and Pippin's weddings, if they should ever settle down! What if I should leave, forever, and regret all the joy that I had left behind?

But having embarked upon this journey, I have found, perhaps for the first time after any momentous choice, that I do not regret it. Or I should say I discovered yesterday that I did not regret it. My hurts have eased already; a painful anniversary has passed more peacefully than I ever thought it could. The way alone has power to soothe; perhaps the Undying Lands themselves can heal the wounds I thought would never heal, and restore my half-empty soul to wholeness.

Of course, there is the question of why I chose to take this book with me, when I left the other – the storybook, the history book, the book I finished and gifted to Sam – as a record of our days for future generations. The answer is not that I expect to continue to write in it in Valinor; for how could the place of perfect rest and peace I joyfully anticipate require any reflection on my part? No; I simply changed my mind – I do not want "historians of the future looking to these writings for a portrait of the famous Halfling Ring-bearer," a scenario I pictured with some amusement two and a half years ago.

Why? As I commented to Faramir, we know little of the individual traits that might humanize the great figures of the past. (Though I have to say, I've always imagined Fëanor's nervous habit to be chewing on a strand of his hair – maybe just because if my hair were as long as the Elves', I would probably chew on it. My fingernails are just the only thing within reach.) In my belief, anyway, they have become magnified and generalized so that their lives can be made into morality plays to teach their successors in history. Melkor's story teaches us that the attempt to usurp a rightful ruler's place must bring punishment. Eärendil teaches that even the gods heed and reward the plea of the steadfast and selfless. And Fëanor, to me the most intriguing historical figure by far, teaches us that pride and vanity; and bending our ears to seductive whispers; and binding ourselves stubbornly to selfish, impossible oaths; and valuing objects, however great their worth, over the lives of our kin, will lead to our destruction.

And I? What will my story teach the generations to come? Something to do with the courage of the small, and the power of perseverance and friendship, no doubt. Whatever the moral, I have made myself the Everyman of a morality play. I am a formless face, until I embody the lesson of my tale.

And what is more, the children of the future will make a hero of me. They will be wrong. They will overlook what I could not do; they will say that no one could have come as far as I did carrying the Ring, and been able to throw it away. They will simply be making excuses. But the fact remains that they will look to me as an example of courage or self-sacrifice or the like, and they will want to see themselves in me. Fortunately (or perhaps consequently?), the characterization of myself in the Red Book is nebulous, shaped chiefly by what a faithful account of my words and actions dictates (that alone, I am sure, will lend me flesh and blood). My hair is neither dark nor golden; my eyes are neither blue nor brown nor grey. I do not bite my fingernails, drop my pen, indulge in self-pity, or parody myself for doing so. I could be any child of Hobbits, or even of Men.


	20. I finish the poem with a motif

October 9, Third Age 3021

**I finish the poem with a motif**

Along with my musings, I am also taking my feeble attempts at poetry with me. Having completed one, I decided that I should finish the other as well – the one about the Shire; it did not yet tell my full story.

But e'en here, out of Mordor's far-reaching sight,

In my haven falls this the last blow of the fight:

My green untouched country is a brown, barren land,

Its trees felled, its people under tyranny's hand.

The Shire, the Shire! Did I think she stayed free,

West of the Shadow and east of the Sea?

------

The wrongs suffered here I can help to repair,

And the trees spring again, swiftly-growing and fair.

But this beauty that my eyes see my heart does not feel,

For the wounds of my darkness never fully can heal.

The Shire! Thou art saved, but saved not for me;

Though the East I recall, I look west to the Sea.

------

I leave once again, but west turn my sail,

To find the Straight Way where the wind does not fail,

And healing to seek near the Uttermost West,

From pain find reprieve and from all labor, rest.

The Shire! though far, my heart dwells still with thee,

Here east of the world's end, west of the Sea.

------

And the winter of autumn must come in turn there,

And fading are many things ancient and fair.

Though the Elves' world depart and Lórien wane,

Still new beauties shall rise and old shadows remain:

The Shire, where grows yet the last mallorn tree

West of the mountains and east of the Sea.

**Author's Note: **Argh! When did become unable to format poetry? Just so you'll know, a ------ marks the breaks between stanzas.


	21. I come home again

Date? I don't believe in dates

**I come home again**

A new shore is in sight, a new adventure for Bilbo, who thrives on such things; for me a new home, a new peace. I feel no apprehension – only joy. Nothing but joy. I am a child again, opening a book to its first page – but not for the first time; I am living as if new an existence as familiar to me as…as my pants, the ones with the threadbare knees.

I must speculate, though, that being one of two Hobbits in a fair country peopled with Elves – wise, radiant, and tall – will be a bit strange. Perhaps it will be no stranger than being one of four Hobbits in a city of Men – except that height is not the greatest difference that will set Hobbits apart here. For me and Bilbo, this is not the end of our journey. The Elves who come find joy and repose here forever, but in fifty years or so, according to the wont of our people – in far less time for my dear cousin, whose age now shows so markedly – I alone will set off on a new Road. The Straighter Way, perhaps, because I have heard it said that there is only one escape from the circles of the world, and Valinor is not really it. It is the one that Elves cannot take, the one for which they envy Me; and Hobbits, after all, are more closely related to Men than to Elves – even accounting for the pointy ears.


End file.
